Original message (1846 Views )
| |  "Comfort Games while self isolating" , posted Fri 3 Apr 20:02:  
I was wondering what y'all have been playing during these crazy times. I know a lot of this is already covered in other threads, but I'd like to start one specifically about the kinds of games you go to for comfort. The gaming equivalent of comfort food. What games do you crave during times of trouble?
(i figured it'd be good to start a new thread instead of working this into the other COVID-19 thread which is more about airing our sorrows--don't want to mix the two cos I figure you get enough of that in other platforms!)
For me I've found myself really drawn to PSOne era games. I have a switch with Breath of the Wild and the latest Fire Emblem. I could be playing Death Stranding or the latest Resident Evils. I could be on Steam playing all sorts of amazing indie games, but something in me just craved the comfort of PSOne era games, particularly RPGs and platformers.
I finally got my hands on the PSX GeGeGe No Kitaro 2d game and its AMAZING. It's one of the most beautifful games I've ever seen. One of the last gen PSX games and it absolutely pushes the systems underutilized 2d capabilites to the max! The sprites are fairly big and gorgeously animated. It does a very smart thing of breaking up the levels into small exciting chunks too, so they feel pretty varied without overloading the system ram. Graphics aside, the gameplay is pretty fun and the sound design is STELLAR. It harkens back to Ghouls and Ghosts. It's fun, a little cute, but also actually spooky! Especially the sound FX!
I also finally started playing Persona Innocent Sin. Someone made a fan translation patch years ago. I do actually own the game on PSP, but never actually played it as my PSP was broken by then and i just bought the game on pure principle (also got that rad OST CD!). It's a fun game! The Kazuma Kaneko characters are so damn cool, the writing is good and there's something so deeply comforting about navigating this tidy, lofi but highly convincing world of nice clean sprites on top of very nice low poly environments that are essentially 3d sprite art.
I also started playing Final Fantasy Tactics again. I have no insight to offer there. That game is just incredible across the board. Sometimes the UX may feel a little dated, but that's fine by me. The art direction, sound design and story are stellar. And I feel the gameplay holds up! Every single action counts! And the size of the playing field is so perfect. It has a real intimate feeling to it. It's also a game where luck plays a bigger role than most newer games. I found myself failing some missions simply cos of bad luck on myy part and enemies scoring criticals. I don't mind this!
Also been booting up the ol Tobal 2. That game's still as beautiful as teh day i first laid eyes on it. It's another one of those titles that maxed out the system in terms of what it's actually good at. The low texture, goraud shaded, hi-rez (for its time) 60fps style still tickles my brain. The animations and gameplay still totally hold up too! To this day I think it's got the best grappling system out of any game I've seen, including the UFC games (that Dream Factory in fact went on to make!) How did Dream Factory peak so hard and so early with the Tobal games? Anyway, I don't mean to throw shade, Tobal 2 is still my fav 3D game of all time. Always fun to pickup and mess around and very intuitive. And my god, that adventure mode where you can capture over 200 playable monsters!!! OOF. Best fightingh game feature (outside of versus mode of course) ever.
I think what appeals to me bout these PSOne games is just how rich and fertile and creative they still feel to this day. There was magic in the air. These devs had honed their skills during the 8bit and 16bit eras, and were approaching 3d with a lot of experience and unique perspectives. The rules for 3d games were not so set in stone yet! That's how you got stuff as bananas as "hey guys, now that we have access to a mocap studio, let's record some dancing!" "YES! And then ... let's apply the dancing data ... to the lizards and dogs!!"
That's the kind of energy I crave in games! Also the kind of energy i hope to bring to my own games.
Anywayy, yup, games are a deep source of comfort right now. This is perhaps, the best time in history to catch up on games.
So ... what are y'all's comfort games?
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Fri 3 Apr 20:03] |
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| "Re(1):Comfort Games while self isolating" , posted Sat 4 Apr 01:29:
Great report, Nobi! I'll unilaterally extend this to board games since we haven't gotten a Switch yet (I was finally ready to get the Switch I've been meaning to buy for two years, but apparently several million other people in the US and Japan had the same idea).
Mostly we play a LOT of Carcasonne, which was the first of many mostly European resource-management PC-esque strategy board games my group got into back in 2006. Somehow my original copy was lost, so we had a local toy store toss a copy in the back of the car for contact-free purchasing. The default set has added a new job, the abbot, which is kind of interesting.
PS1 is no doubt full of great creative items, and I'd like to get back to FFVIII (remastered) after stopping shortly into Disc 2 just where things get really good. The timing of when I played that game in high school, and my own personal preference for it above all others besides VI, makes it a relaxing place to return.
Bu while there's some great, rough-around-the-edges Famicom-like creativity to the PS1 library (Tobal 2 forever), I might go for the more refinded but marvelously creative PS2 library (it's the Super Famicom in this metaphor). I wish I had my PS2 from the family home...we've been wanting to play Katamari Damashii again, which I think would be a great comfort game. It would also be nice to go back to Wander and the Colossus, merely because I think it's one of the most important games ever made.
I would also like to play Flower again! A purifying wind seems very appealing now. Luckily, I have the soundtrack, at least, which has been relaxing in all kinds of situations over the years.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Sat 4 Apr 07:21] |
| | "Re(2):Comfort Games while self isolating" , posted Sat 4 Apr 05:29
A very 2020-era game is "Kind Words", in which strangers bare their hearts in 14 lines and you can choose to anonymously reply to them in 14 lines. The game has a button that links you to an emergency service if you think a person's message indicates they are in immediate danger (e.g. suicide). It is very not a game if you are already emotionally drained. However, the act of comforting TOTAL STRANGERS you will never see and never get replies from can wind up being a reassuring experience. You can communicate life experience and perspective to others, some of which are clearly younger than you, or less experienced than you, or less fortunate than you. I also make a point of writing in complete sentences with punctuation and proper spelling, in order to test my composition.
Death Stranding is great for the feeling of being able to go on long, adventurous hikes.
Nioh 2 is a very hard game in which all you have to do is kill everything and make your numbers go up. It's kind of reassuring in that way.
Playing fighting games with other people through modern internet powered software is really great, because you can talk with voice to your gaming group and talk about how life is in their part of the world along with talking about the game. It's a very comfortable place to experience, because you have a little thing to collaborate and compete on while also having the larger frame of life to discuss. Having voice chat together with text chat vastly enriches the communication experience.
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| "Re(7):Comfort Gunhouse while self isolating" , posted Wed 15 Apr 11:12
quote:
I was disappointed that the penguin gun was not the most powerful of all weapons, but maybe that's only in the Iggy Special Edition.
I... admit I stopped playing when the penguin gun stopped being enough to solve all my problems.
If I hadn't already made it past day 100 (it's true!), Gunhouse would probably be a comfort game rather than a Way of Life or an intense long-term experience I'm not sure I could mentally handle again, like Evangelion, Xenogears, or Nier Automata. That said, I am here to prescribe a steady regimen of the penguin gun, skull gun, and powered up dragon gun that will get you all the way past Exodus and Juan's freaky Peter Molyneux moon boss ten times, I guarantee it.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| "Re(2):Re(10):Comfort Games while self isolati" , posted Fri 24 Apr 18:43
Musou games.
I mean this in the most maniacal way possible.
I played through Spirit of Sanada recently, and oh my lord is that game a musou. Somehow there's nothing quite like grinding and grinding in a game until the weakest enemies in the game die from hearing your footstep several meters away. Although, my real enemy in that game became what's called the "exploration zones." Each zone has 4 sets of goals, one of which is such infuriating but ever-so-Omega-Force design where you have to fight 10 of a rare enemy. Each zone has 3 areas where the enemy can spawn, but the kicker is that the enemy doesn't always spawn, so trying to complete this goal requires you to enter the map, visit the three spawn areas (which you only know about after having found the enemy there, otherwise there is no hint at all) and praying that they actually show up at least once. And when they don't, it's back to the map screen to try again. There are 20 of these exploration maps in the game, all with copy-pasted areas for maximum confusion, and I went and did this on EVERY SINGLE ONE. The enemies are not difficult to beat. There was no achievement for doing this. Even the in-game reward is just some measly experience that's barely enough to raise a level. So why did I do it? Because I HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS AND THAT'S WHAT MUSOU DOES TO YOU, IT MAKES YOU WASTE YOUR TIME DOING SOMETHING THAT MEANS NOTHING BECAUSE IT'S JUST... FREAKING... THERE
Otherwise I'm emotionally stable and staring daily at the FF7R icon on my PS4 without touching it until the pandemic is over. Because frankly I didn't like the demo and I wasn't going to install the game but my PS4 decided this for me and now the feelings of "I might as well play it since it got installed" and "I don't want to play it even though I own it" are at war in my brain. For a similar reason, Shenmue 3 has been installed on there since January but don't let any of this distract you from the fact that I have more musou to do.
So in the meantime, Pirate Warriors 4. PW4 is meaningful enough to me as a property that I actually care what's not in it. I never knew that Omega Force was capable of removing characters from their games these days. I mean, even Spirit of Sanada is supposed to be focused only on the Sanada clan adventures and ignoring everyone else, and yet they somehow found a reason to include the 60+ other characters from the series in there just because it would have been more boring without them. Meanwhile, PW4 excludes nearly half the cast of PW3 precisely because of their lack of overall story importance, while doing a hack job to include a whopping three PTS arcs without a single new character to set them apart from previous entries. But hey who cares, look at me just trying to get S rank in every mission because I don't know why? Once again, it's not an achievement and the rewards are pretty trivial, but I gotta do it because ugh those A ranks just hurt to look at with the big obnoxious font.
Now I'm nearly done with PW4 and when I finish it I theoretically could play Shenmue 3, or I could play FF7R. Or I could play Gravity Rush 2, which I also have. Or I could play Xenoblade Chronicles for more than 5 minutes. Or I could get back into Bravely Second which I keep abandoning. Can you guess which one? That's right, the answer is WARRIORS OROCHI 4 and I'm going to max out all 100+ characters. Hit me with another musou, bartender. SHUT UP, I'LL TELL YOU WHEN I'VE HAD ENOUGH
And when I'm done with that? Surely then I can-
Oh hey I also have Hyrule Warriors, what do you know
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| | "Re(3):Re(10):Comfort Games while self isolati" , posted Sat 25 Apr 00:31
quote:
That's right, the answer is WARRIORS OROCHI 4 and I'm going to max out all 100+ characters. Hit me with another musou, bartender. SHUT UP, I'LL TELL YOU WHEN I'VE HAD ENOUGH
I hadn't played a mainline musou since... Samurai 2 I think?
The combination of Confinement + the announcement of a new Sengoku BASARA game + the dread that the game will probably be as bad as the last few ones + the WFH situation will probably mean the game will be shelved to have more hands on projects that really matter (either RE or MH) threw me in a despair spiral that led me to install Musou Orochi 4. I thought I knew what I was going into, a silly crossover with mindless button mashing.
I didn't expect though that the first mission will start with Ii Naotora in my team. That was my first exposure to the Musou version of the character. I strongly disliked her in BASARA, so I was curious to see what Musou did with her... and boy, I had forgotten how Musou treats its female characters in general. It felt so gross to have what is basically a DoA character without having time to properly prepare myself that I ended up refunding the game.
I ended up hunting back my PS3 and my copy of Sumeragi to have Matsu wack fools with a bear, a gang of seaguls, a wolf and a husband.
I did like Zelda Musou a lot back on WiiU, though. Maybe I should get it on Switch and waste time on that.
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| "Re(3):Re(10):Comfort Games while self isolati" , posted Sat 25 Apr 01:26:
quote:
Musou games.
I mean this in the most maniacal way possible.
I played through Spirit of Sanada recently, and oh my lord is that game a musou. Somehow there's nothing quite like grinding and grinding in a game until the weakest enemies in the game die from hearing your footstep several meters away. Although, my real enemy in that game became what's called the "exploration zones." Each zone has 4 sets of goals, one of which is such infuriating but ever-so-Omega-Force design where you have to fight 10 of a rare enemy. Each zone has 3 areas where the enemy can spawn, but the kicker is that the enemy doesn't always spawn, so trying to complete this goal requires you to enter the map, visit the three spawn areas (which you only know about after having found the enemy there, otherwise there is no hint at all) and praying that they actually show up at least once. And when they don't, it's back to the map screen to try again. There are 20 of these exploration maps in the game, all with copy-pasted areas for maximum confusion, and I went and did this on EVERY SINGLE ONE. The enemies are not difficult to beat. There was no achievement for doing this. Even the in-game reward is just some measly experience that's barely enough to raise a level. So why did I do it? Because I HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS AND THAT'S WHAT MUSOU DOES TO YOU, IT MAKES YOU WASTE YOUR TIME DOING SOMETHING THAT MEANS NOTHING BECAUSE IT'S JUST... FREAKING... THERE
Otherwise I'm emotionally stable an
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
After reading this I think I will finally start up my Berserk Musou game i purchased years ago.
Long Live I AM!
[this message was edited by neo0r0chiaku on Sat 25 Apr 01:27] |
| | "Re(3):Re(10):Comfort Musou while Musoing" , posted Sat 25 Apr 09:05
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Open up my tab and keep the musou coming
For those of you who would like a change of pace from Musou but not too big of a change of pace from Musou, in the fashion of having a Tom Collins as a change of pace from the 23684328th Gimlet you've downed, I highly recommend EARTH DEFENSE FORCE.
You can find Earth Defense Force 5 on the PC via Steam and on the PS4. You can find its contemporary gaiden with different design perspective Earth Defense Force Iron Rain on both platforms as well. Both are highly recommended games which can be as easy or as difficult as you want, and are unparalleled in the world of 3D games as games in which the 3D environment is paramount to how you interact with the barbarian hordes. Like Musou, if you wish to grind for hundreds of hours, there are tons and tons of weapons for you to acquire, each of which is hand-designed and has sometimes amusing descriptions. There are four extremely unique character classes, and the game becomes enormously better with friends.
I can also wholeheartedly recommend Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair on PS4 or Steam, which is the vastly improved version of Earth Defense Force 2025 or Earth Defense Force 4 (seriously, don't bother with vanilla EDF4 or EDF 2025). EDF 4.1 introduces the single greatest innovation in the EDF series: a song which you can play verse by verse as a voiced chat callout, which all of your allies will respond together with the next verse of. Frankly, Musou games should have this feature so that you can lead your army in a heroic song as you march towards the enemy. It is worth noting that the song in EDF4 is better than the one in EDF5, so EDF4 may serve as a better introduction to the series. However, both games are terrific.
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| | "Re(5):Re(10):Comfort EDF while Musoing" , posted Sat 25 Apr 13:51
So what I find extremely delightful about EDF is how varied the weapons are and how important the 3D environment is to how everything interacts. The presence of destructible buildings means things that route the insects in particular ways, but sometimes that means that it blocks your line of fire. Very few weapons hit instantly, so even though enemies are gigantic the spaces between are so great that the act of shooting requires a lot of manual control. The weapon variety results in extreme variation in how you tackle a given mission. And so on. If you suddenly find yourself with some really cool weapon for another class, you might decide to use that other class, and again your strategies and tactics change. Because you get drops for other classes and armor is distributed to other classes now, the others don't fall TOO far behind.
But it is also 100% entirely true that in EDF, there exist only two mission types: kill everything, and survive until time runs out.
And once you've played enough for a little while.... hey, that's fine! You can put it down and come back later! It's not going anywhere. There's no timed banner event for you to rush or any bonus ending you're going to get for beating the game fast. Just enjoy playing it until you've had enough, and then do something else. Just because chili is a comfort food doesn't mean I need to eat the entire pot of it I just made!
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| | "Re(6):Re(10):Comfort EDF while Musoing" , posted Sat 25 Apr 23:02
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So what I find extremely delightful about EDF is how varied the weapons are and how important the 3D environment is to how everything interacts.
The issue for me may be that I've played EDF2, 2017, 2025, 4.1, and 5. 2017 was a remake of EDF1, to the point that it didn't even carry over the new character from EDF2. EDF3 was an enhanced handheld port of 2017. 2025 was a remake of EDF2. 4.1 was an enhanced port of 2025. EDF5 is another story reboot, while mechanically it is a tweaked 4.1.
Weapons are varied, but weapon types range a bit too much in usefulness. Some are too specialized, even if useful, to justify burning an equipment spot when facing hordes of enemies. Many honestly aren't that useful, or have otherwise utterly crippling issues. And the level-based loot drop system means that the weapon list is quite padded with same-but-better "numbers-go-up" entries.
The levels get larger, but that isn't always a positive. At times levels in later entries feel needlessly big for the sluggish-on-foot characters. I'm guessing that visual variety is a low priority since half of a location is going to be leveled by the end, and the game is built around the idea of being able to recycle its locations for different missions, but the visuals really start to run together long before you make it through a game, and don't necessarily change that much between games.
Mechanically, the game does implement tweaks that are generally for the better. (Much better than Omega Force's two-steps forward, one-to-three-steps-back pattern.) At the same time, said improvements can feel like they are years overdue when they do happen. Worse, some elements likely never will be improved.
The repeated reboots are annoying for another reason, in that you keep getting new "beginner" levels to play through. Worse, these levels are getting longer. EDF5's first few levels were a painful slog of non-action, and you've got four different classes to play each of them with for "completion".
For its many faults, Musou games feel like largely smooth action. EDF has fun action, but it is hard to call it smooth.
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| | "Re(7):Re(10):Comfort EDF while Musoing" , posted Sun 26 Apr 02:26
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The issue for me may be that I've played EDF2, 2017, 2025, 4.1, and 5.
Hooray, a fellow EDF nut! I've played EDF 2, 2017, 2025, 4.1, 5, Insect Armageddon, and Iron Rain, and the mobile idle game (which is horrible), and the Wing Diver shmup (which I also do not recommend)!
100% agree on the intro levels getting longer and more obnoxious. The 4.1 "walk very long distances between trivially easy groups of big ants" was bad enough. That said, I think it made the stage where the pylons are revealed (after you finally walk out of that accursed base) a real standout, and the stage where you return there really glorious.
For me, part of the delight of EDF is finding uses for weapons that seem useless, as well as getting shocked at how useless/stupid certain things are! I really enjoyed trying to figure out how to make a helicopter equipped with flamethrowers (which are bizarrely well-articulated in their pivoting mechanisms...) work, or feeling that what I had with one class totally didn't fit a level and then discovering that another class I never thought would be able to handle the level could handle the level.
I agree that the constant rebooting is a little weird, and in terms of humor consistency I'm not really thrilled with how competent HQ is in EDF 5 where it's hilarious incompetence led to a lot of laughs with my friends in 2017.
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| | "Re(8):Re(10):Comfort EDF while Musoing" , posted Sun 26 Apr 09:29
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Hooray, a fellow EDF nut! I've played EDF 2, 2017, 2025, 4.1, 5, Insect Armageddon, and Iron Rain, and the mobile idle game (which is horrible), and the Wing Diver shmup (which I also do not recommend)!
I tried to like the Wing Diver shmup, but the forced scrolling format only exacerbated the weapon usefulness issue.
I don't count Insect Armageddon as an EDF game. I'm not trying to be elitist; it is EDF in name and setting only, arguably more of a different game than even the Wing Diver shmup. It isn't as janky as EDF, but it also lacks the elements that made EDF fun. Instead, it is just a generic bland Western FPS/TPS where you travel from waypoint to waypoint fighting handfuls of enemies as they spawn in to attack in waves.
As for modern EDF level sizes, I can only see EDF5 as confirming that the devs are fully committed to increasingly large levels. After all, EDF5 not only gave the foot-slogging Ranger class a Sprint function, Rangers also gained the previously Air Raider exclusive ability to summon their own vehicles for faster movement. Which is hardly an optimal solution when you consider that vehicles have always been on the franchises weaker elements.
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probably not
